cleansing ​a leper

The Miracle of Cleansing a Leper8:1When He had come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. 2And behold, a leper came and worshiped Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”3Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed.4And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one; but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them” (Matt. 8:1-4).

Now is the time to talk about miracles, leprosy, and submission. Since people often regard miracles somewhat suspiciously, the nature of miracles is a good starting point. We have gained a great deal of knowledge about nature in the two millennia since Christ. There are textbooks and college courses and advanced degrees on all parts of nature – from microbiology to forest ecosystems, from obstetrics to midwifery. The Tree of Knowledge has educated us in many aspects of our world. First, a miracle is unnatural. It is not covered in any scientific course. Miracles cannot be covered in any science, because our sciences are focused on nature, and the source of a miracle comes from outside of nature. By definition, a miracle is “An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God.”

A miracle does not break nature’s laws but is an activity of God, a force from outside of the system. And nature does an excellent job of incorporating the miracle into its system as if nothing unnatural had occurred. Nature continues as it has since it began. And that is the key point. As a part of creation, nature had a beginning. No one claims that it has always been in existence. And the source of nature, how it began, is not in the jurisdiction of science. Think of nature as a wheel within a larger wheel, or “a partial system within reality,” as C.S. Lewis put it in Miracles (toward the end of Chapter 8). Nature is not “the whole show” and can be acted upon by the super-natural force of God without contradiction.

When we deny miracles we deny the living God, the God who is an individual, the God who is active and interactive with His creation.If we do not see God as separate from His creation, then He is indistinguishable from nature and we have pantheism. And here no miracle can occur. Christianity has miracles throughout, from creation through the resurrection, from the virgin birth to the new earth of the book of Revelation. The epilogue in Lewis’ Miracles has two cautions: 1) we are immersed in nature and tempted to believe only in that reality, and 2) miracles come on great occasions and, just as it is highly unlikely that we have been or will be present in a place at the exact time that a momentous historical event occurs, so it is unlikely that we shall see a miracle. Personally, there are probably a number of “small” miracles that have occurred in each of our lives, events with seeming impossibly remote chances of occurring. Many of these are subjective, and many are imagined, but not all can be ruled invalid. This has been a very limited and amateurish view of miracles, so please look at the more advanced and complete commentaries on the subject.

The second point concerning Jesus’ first miracle after the Sermon is that the disease of leprosy is the first to be miraculously healed by Jesus. Leprosy in Jesus’ time was seen as a divine judgment on an individual. We do see leprosy placed upon those who transgressed against God many times in the Old Testament, although we do not see this intent when rules for dealing with leprosy were given in Leviticus 13. The fact that the priesthood was given authority (rather than doctors) concerning leprosy may confirm the view that the disease was a punishment from God. When Miriam spoke against Moses at the tabernacle of meeting, God put leprosy on her, (Num. 12:10); Gehazi became leprous when he lied to Elisha (2 Kings 5:27); and when Uzziah usurped the priestly role, he also became leprous (2 Chr. 26:20).

Leprosy, a contagious bacterial disease, was greatly feared. Symptoms included thickening of the skin, lacerations, and ulceration; nerve damage leading to loss of sensation and muscle weakness; eye problems often leading to blindness; and other symptoms, finally ending in death. Because of the possible transmission of the disease, lepers were required to avoid being near other people, and announced that they were lepers when near other people, often crying simply, “Unclean!” For Jesus to go near a leper was an act of bravery. To cure a leper was not thought possible, and the leper was under the care of the priests rather than the doctors. The king of Israel implied that only God could cure leprosy (2 Kings 5:7), so curing this leper was a sign to all of Jesus’ true nature. Jesus cleansed the unclean, and sent him to the priests as dictated by the Law of Moses.

The third point is that the leper had no hope. His would be a slow and painful death. He had reason to submit himself to Christ. And he expressed confidence in Jesus’ healing powers. In curing the man, Jesus gave him good reason to submit to the priests, to follow the law prescribed for confirmation of cleansing. Self-confidence and submission have the appearance of being contradictory. The people who followed the law by their own power thought themselves self-sufficient. Confidence in our own abilities for being “clean,” holy and without blemish (or confidence in those men and women to whom we give our power), comes at a high cost. This is like pulling ourselves upward by our own bootstraps. We can be confident to the limit of our abilities, and then confident in the abilities of the Creator. All of this was done in the presence of the “great multitudes (who had) followed Him.” Jesus inspired a new kind of confidence.Next article